PACIFICA RADIO EXPOSED AS PHONY 'PROGRESSIVE' MEDIA

Pacifica Radio blows 9-11 coverage
By Kellia Ramares
Online Journal Contributing Editor

June 22, 2002—The following is a speech I delivered last night to a meeting of the interim Pacifica National Board. About 100 people were in attendance.

I'm Kellia Ramares, co-producer of Guns and Butter: The Economics of Politics, and a KPFA news reporter. And I've got news for you, Pacificans: Bush knew. The administration allowed the 9-11 attacks to occur to garner support for a war the American people would not back otherwise. A war without end that it being used to fill the pockets of the defense contractors, to gain control of the Central Asian drug trade for the benefit of Wall Street and to destroy our constitutional rights.

This is the story of all our lives and Pacifica's coverage is dreadful. KPFA will broadcast gavel-to-gavel coverage of the public session of the joint intelligence committees as it prepares to further convince us that the United States is the global superpower despite a CIA and FBI that are the modern day equivalent of the Keystone Kops.

How many of you know that Porter Goss, co-chair of the Joint Intelligence Committee, is a former CIA case officer? Do you know that several of these committee members receive campaign contributions from the Carlyle Group and the Big 5 defense contractors? How much faith can you put in those hearing to get to the bottom of this story? Yet, I don't hear any so-called progressive pundits who fill Pacifica's airwaves, people such as Norman Solomon, Marc Cooper or David Corn, questioning the credibility of this committee or questioning whther the hearing should be on KPFA's air....this committee, which includes past and current members of the Trialateral Commission, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the Bilderberg Society. Do you even know what those organizations are? They are mechanisms of the New World Order.

I didn't learn about them from Pacifica. I learned about them from Guns & Butter's inaugural guest, Michael C. Rupert of From the Wilderness. And when GNB brought him back during the February fundraiser in the form of a lecture excerpt that raised funds at a level one staff member called "Amy Goodman number," out came the self-appointed gatekeepers: [Norman] Solomon, [Marc] Cooper and [David] Corn, and recently Matthew Rothschild, to attack Ruppert's credibility. They can't nail him on the facts of the case, but they can spread lies. And their lies have marginalized Guns & Butter. Today marks the first day I have had any real conversation with a programmer other than my ally, Wendell Harper, about Ruppert or 9-11 foreknowledge, even though everyone at KPFA and a few people at the national level know I have lived with this story since October. And when I talked to this programmer, she indicated her interest in a debate between Solomon and Ruppert because she herself wasn't up on the story! Since when do reporters have to debate their reportage?

There are people being disappeared into the INS Gulag and Navy brig, including now an American citizen, and there are public affairs programmers not up on the story? Shame on you, Pacifica! Shame that every public affairs show in the entire network is not crawling all over this story and leading the ouster of this illegitimate, thieving, treasonous, murderous, warmongering excuse for an Administration.

Shame on you for spending so much airtime on these armchair quarterbacks who haven't done a lick of their own reporting on the story, while people who have done so are ignored, belittled or vilified. And I can't help but notice that Ruppert's biggest critics at KPFK are connected with The Nation magazine, no real friend of the dissidents in the recent struggle. Who has really won that battle?

Is this the Pacifica I got arrested for on July 13, 1999? Is this the Pacifica for which so many people are being asked to give so much money? I call on everyone dissatisfied with Pacifica's 9-11 coverage to let your voice be heard, at these meetings and at your local stations. Our lives and our freedoms depend on the truth being heard.